


all the ragged edges of us

by tragicallynerdy



Category: UnDeadwood (Web Series)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode 4 spoilers, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Non-Explicit Sex, Soulmate au - where they feel each other's pain, Soulmates, Temporary Character Death, hurt and eventual comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-29
Updated: 2020-05-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:20:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24431992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tragicallynerdy/pseuds/tragicallynerdy
Summary: Clayton Sharpe is 32 years old when he meets his soulmate. (One day later he dies by his hand.)
Relationships: Aloysius Fogg/Clayton Sharpe
Comments: 14
Kudos: 38





	all the ragged edges of us

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all! May I offer you an AlyClay soulmate au in these weird and trying times? This is my first ever attempt at a soulmate au, because the idea was giving me all the feels and wouldn't leave me alone. 
> 
> As always, heed the tags. This is one of the soulmate au's where soulmates feel each other's pain - so injuries are referenced throughout. The implied/referenced child abuse bit is very brief, but worth tagging. This bounces between their POVs, hopefully it's easy enough to follow. 
> 
> Hope y'all enjoy!

“Soulmates are a curious thing, baby” his ma had said, rocking him on her lap as he sobbed through a broken leg that wasn’t his. “A blessing and a curse. Ain’t no telling who will have one, or if you’ll ever even meet them. Seems yours has had some bad luck today.”

“Are you and pa soulmates, ma?” he hiccuped into her blouse. “Does he make you hurt too?”

It was a long moment before she replied. “No, Amos, we ain’t soulmates. My soul is my own, ain’t split between me and another.” She smoothed his hair back and pressed a kiss to his forehead. “I’m sorry you were given this burden, sweetheart.”

She wiped his tears on her apron and gave him a sip of whiskey for the pain, then sent him off to do his chores. He had limped for a week, before he became accustomed to the phantom pain echoing from the other half of his soul.

A blessing and a curse, she had said. (He never forgot.)

* * *

Aly is eleven years old the first time he feels the phantom touch of a pain that isn’t his. It’s simple, just a scrape across his cheek, and he thinks something was thrown at him until he realizes no one is near. It keeps happening, tiny aches and bumps that should grow into bruises but don’t. He’d been sure he didn’t have a soulmate, thought he was far too old to be feeling it now, until his mama explains that his soulmate must be far younger than him. _A baby_ , he’d thought with irritation.

When he is older he will feel sorry for the child that carries both such pain of their own (a bruising grip around a wrist, the snap of a ruler across knuckles, the smack of a hand across a cheek) and the pain he sends them (the sickening pain as his leg breaks, the crack of a fist across his teeth, the sharp pangs of hunger).

 _Someday_ , he tells himself, and whispers to them, _someday neither of us will feel pain like this again. I promise you._

(It is not a promise he can keep, but he does not know that yet.)

* * *

Many years later Aloysius meets his soulmate, and he doesn’t even notice (not then, at least. He wonders when he sees Clayton and Matthew get thrown from their horses, feels a slam of pain that’s timed too perfectly to be mere coincidence. Then he sees the Reverend clutch his side when it’s his own shoulder that aches, and sees Clayton walk away looking uninjured – and it stays a question without an answer. He knows for sure when he feels a rush of – not pain, not in the traditional sense, but exhaustion so deep it _hurts_ at the very same time that Clayton sags, grits his teeth, and keeps firing at whatever Cochran has become. He _knows_ , and he feels fear and elation for all of ten minutes before everything gets wiped away into cold, clinical judgement).

He’s new to Deadwood, barely there a few days when he gets the summons to Swearengen’s office. The last one in the room has a steady gaze and a slow drawl, and eyes so blue his breath catches in his chest before they disappear under the brim of a dark hat. He doesn’t forget them, not exactly, but he’s seen beautiful eyes before, so he takes up the offer for some time with Swearengen’s girls instead of pursuing a dalliance with a – co-worker may not be the right word, but it’s one that fits for now.

(It will not be the one that fits best for long.)

* * *

Clayton realizes that he’s met his soulmate the moment he sees Aly get shot on the thoroughfare and feels the mirroring bite of a bullet in his own side. It’s dark, and he can just make out Aly’s blood on his side that a fucking _dead man walking_ caused, and he _knows._ He shoves the realization away, along with the panic and relief and hope and every emotion he just can’t fucking deal with right now. Because right now, there are undead bandits shooting at them, and this goddamn _magic_ they seem to have been cursed with. He ignores the pain, and the rush of worry when he sees the blood, and focuses on his own guns and his own shooting and the only change he can affect on the world. Not that it does much good; his shooting is off, his hands shaky for the first time in _years_ , and he knows it isn’t because of the dead men now walking the streets.

 _Soulmates can come later, when lives aren’t in danger and the dead don’t walk the streets,_ he tells himself. _Later, it can come_ _later._

That night, after they’ve all retired to their rooms, he walks quietly to Aloysius’ door and stands, hand poised to knock, fear twisting his stomach into knots. He does not knock. He tells himself he can wait until the morning. Or the day after. Or some other time, when this whole thing settles and they have a moment to breath and he can catch him alone.

(He tries to tell himself that his fear isn’t there, that he’s just being practical; just like he tries to ignore the part of him that whispers that he doesn’t really deserve a soulmate anyway, or that the sort of wholeness a bond brings is not meant for him; how dare he believe that his soul has another half that meets all his craggy, broken pieces? So he waits, and pretends, and tries not to hope too hard.)

(He shouldn’t have waited.)

* * *

_Should have expected this_ , Clayton thinks bitterly some twenty-four hours later as his soulmate levels a gun at his head. The elation of victory, of finally finding his goddamn _soulmate_ , evaporates. His heart is plummeting but his hands are steady, so he asks for one last drink.

“Where you comin' from?” he asks.

Aly’s voice is dead, void of the emotion that filled it not some few hours before. “It don’t matter where we’re comin' from, only matters where we’re going.”

He twists in his seat, gets the barrel of the gun dug into his skull before he can finish the movement. He stops, breathes, and swallows down the fear (the grief, the betrayal).

“Do you know?” he rasps out. “That we’re -"

“That don’t matter none,” Aly says. “Not now. Maybe once, but anything I felt for you is gone.”

He knows then, deep in his gut, that he will die tonight. (His gut never lies.)

(Four minutes later he is dead, shot through the heart by his soulmate. A blessing and a curse, his mama said. The blessing never came.)

* * *

The duel is both quicker and longer than it should be, over in a matter of seconds and yet drawing out a lifetime. It feels like his whole life has been building to _this moment_ , when his soulmate is trying to kill him. (He’d hoped for better, he’d hoped _so hard_ , but that is not the hand that fate dealt him. It was not the hand that fate dealt him fifteen years ago, running from a crime he didn’t commit, and it is not the hand that fate dealt him today, as he dies by his soulmate’s hand.)

He shoots, and hits Aly in the stomach, then staggers back from the sympathetic pain. Aly misses. Clayton breathes, and realizes that he can’t kill Aly, no more than he could kill himself – that’s his companion, his friend, his goddamn _soulmate_. His other half, his missing piece. The man whose ragged edges should fit together perfectly with his own, the only one who could.

He shoots for the hand, and Aly shoots for the heart. (He misses, the first time, and hits Clayton in the gut. And although he watches for it, Clayton sees no flicker of pain on his face, and grief grows like a yawning chasm in his chest. He’s heard of severed bonds, but not before they’d even had a chance to fucking _form_ -)

(Aly doesn’t miss a second time.)

He blinks and the street is gone, replaced by distance stars and lamplight, the hard ground underneath his back. Aly approaches, the slow clink of spurs, and stares passively down at him. Clayton quirks a smile at the irony of it all as blood coats his teeth from the inside.

And then he dies. (He does not feel Aly close his eyelids, and the last thing he sees are the stars.)

* * *

“Did you notice -" Arabella hesitates, then spits out her observation. “When Mister Sharpe shot Aly, it seemed like it hurt him too. Do you think -"

Miriam laughs through her tears. There is nothing gleeful in the sound. “Be a poetic sort of tragedy, to be shot by your own soulmate.”

“Maybe that’s what Mister Sharpe meant, that they were… that they were soulmates. But why didn’t it -”

“What kind of monster would kill his own _soulmate_?” Miriam bursts out, grief giving waay to fury. “His other half, his missing piece. It’s the worst feeling in the world, when your soul dies.”

Arabella lays a hand on her shoulder. “Was your husband…”

Miriam nods, and says no more (because what is there to say, really? She left her other half in a goddamn shack, burning the remains so at least she wouldn’t remember that half of her soul is rotting away).

“We should bury him,” Matthew finally says, rosary clutched in his hand.

So they do.

(Miriam screams when he knocks on her hotel room door not two days later, grave dirt falling from his clothes. Matthew comes running, and they nearly kill him a second time before he speaks. He manages to spit out that “it’s me, it’s me, please don’t kill me,” then vomits dirt and a handful of bugs onto the wooden floorboards. They take him to the church, after that. Where else could he go?)

* * *

Aly does not feel the pain of his soulmate passing. In fact, he feels nothing; no pain, no fear, no anger, no sorrow (and no joy). He eats and drinks only because he knows he must, but finds no pleasure in the tasks. (Maybe, he wonders briefly, maybe this is proof that this killing was just. Wouldn’t it hurt, if Kinsley was a good man?)

(He forgets that Kinsley was his soulmate, allows it to pass into the recesses of his mind. It has no bearing anymore.)

(He does not notice when Clayton claws his way out of his own grave, hands scraped and bleeding, lungs burning with the need for air, chest still aching from the bullet that ended his life.)

It takes six days. Six days, riding for Jack County, watching the scenery with no regard for its beauty. Then one evening, all the feeling that had been an absent void for the last six days returns, hitting him at once with a week’s worth of pain, joy, fear, anger, and sorrow. And he remembers, and remembers, and _remembers._

(He falls off his horse, and does not pretend his tears are from the pain of falling.)

* * *

“You died,” Arabella says, staring at Clayton with wide eyes after Miriam drags her to the church in the dead of night.

Clayton coughs, huddled in a blanket and still covered in grave dirt. His hands and face are smeared with it, like he tried to clean them off but couldn’t manage.

“So I hear,” he croaks. Matthew holds out a tin cup and he takes it with trembling hands.

Arabella looks at Miriam. “Is he even – even alive?"

“He’s got a pulse, honey,” she replies, with a shrug of her shoulders. “And his hands are bleeding. None of the others bled.”

Arabella walks closer, then takes Clayton’s wrist, presses fingers to his pulse point. “ _How_ -"

“I don’t know,” he coughs, before she can ask. “Woke up in a box, dug my way out.”

She looks at the bruised and battered hands, fingertips cracked and nails torn. Then she looks at his face, more vulnerable then she’d ever seen him in life.

“Do you remember?” she asks softly. “How you died?”

He swallows and averts his gaze. “I do.”

“Was he… was Aly…”

“He was.”

No more need be said. There are no words that ease a betrayal of this magnitude. So they say nothing. (They say nothing, but take him upstairs, and draw him a bath, and give him clothes, and provide a sanctuary for him while his soulmate carries on.)

* * *

“I’m sorry you lost him before it even had a chance to begin,” Miriam whispers three days later, as they sit at the back of the church, drinking and looking at the stars.

Clayton laughs. “I’m just glad we weren’t bonded yet, y'know? Would’ve been worse.”

“Not by much.”

(He has no response, for he knows it to be true.)

* * *

“Do you think if Eugene and my sister were soulmates she’d still be alive?” Arabella asks Miriam one day. Miriam gathers her close, and wipes away her tears.

“I don’t know, honey. I wish I did, but I don’t.”

* * *

Life goes on, despite the pain. They concoct some story, some falsehood to make the town believe that Clayton never died, that he was merely injured to death’s door but not beyond it. None of them have any answers for why he crawled out of the grave, despite Arabella’s furious research and Matthew’s prayers and Miriam’s subtle inquiries with the locals. They settle on “soulmate shit” and leave it at that.

The wound in Clayton’s chest heals, and he tries to pretend there wasn’t one in his heart to begin with. But he cannot help but think that his mama was wrong; that soulmates were a curse, no blessing at all. (Or maybe it’s just him, with his horrendous luck and his undeserving soul; maybe he deserves a curse with no reprieve.)

(Aly is 312 miles away from Deadwood when he feels a phantom pain burst across his nose, then another explode in his ribs. He turns around and spurs his horse faster before he even has time to think, to realize what it means, to wonder at the how and why. _He’s alive, and we still have a chance_.)

* * *

Aly arrives in Deadwood in the afternoon. He makes for the church, because he hopes that’s where he’ll find him, or them, or anyone who can tell him where Clayton is.

He’s barely through the door before Matthew is slamming him up against a wall, pistol digging into his jaw, looking fit to kill.

“You best have a real good reason for coming back here, Mister Fogg,” he growls, in that deep voice that Aly has only heard once before. He’d be afraid if he weren’t so tired, and so goddamn desperate he could cry.

“Where is he?” he asks, stupidly. Matthew clocks him across the face, then slams him back against the wall, jaw aching.

“He _died_ , you goddamn -"

“Please -" Matthew digs the barrel of the gun back under his jaw, and he doesn’t resist. “Please, Reverend. I know he’s alive, I’m _sorry_ -"

Matthew cocks the barrel of his gun, and Clayton walks through the goddamn door. He freezes, goes pale, and all of Aly’s breath leaves him at once. Clayton was _alive_ , it wasn’t some phantom pain cooked up by his own guilt, he was _there_ -

(Aly notices the bruise blooming across his face, the freshly broken nose, and feels regret that does not belong to him.)

He must make some noise, or Clayton does, because Matthew glances behind him, then digs the gun further into Aly’s neck. Clayton lets out a strangled sound, clutching his neck from the spark of pain emanating from Aly.

“Clay, you need to _go_ , he came back for you –“

“I didn’t!” Aly shouts, holding up his hands in supplication. “Not how you think. _Please_ ,” he says, softer. “Please, just hear me out. Tie me up, take my guns just - _please_.”

They tie him up and take his guns, and sit to hear him out. Aly’s stomach twists at the way Clayton’s hands shake as they wrap rope around his wrists, at the blank look that’s settled on his face and the way he won’t make eye contact. Matthew insists on staying, shotgun laying across his lap, scowl plastered across his face. He offers to send for Miriam and Arabella, but Clayton shakes his head.

“I wanna hear what he has to say before Miriam tries to kill him,” Clayton murmurs. Matthew nods, then gestures for Aly to begin.

He tells the tale in a halting voice, of how his bid for healing failed, and how the Dealer took his emotions away, and all care he had for them had fled.

“He took my pain too,” he says, desperately hoping they’ll understand. “When you… when I killed you,” he chokes out. Clayton flinches, and Matthew grips his shotgun tighter. “I didn’t feel a damn thing. It didn’t matter, _you_ didn’t matter, the only thing that mattered was the law.”

He takes a moment to breathe, to let the air settle around them, and when he speaks again tears are gathering in his eyes.

“I’m so damn sorry,” he says, trying to make eye contact. Clayton’s been staring at the ground since he started, face pale except for that vivid bruise. “I wish more than anything that I could take it back. Because you _matter_ , Clayton, you matter so damn much. You’re _mine_ , my _soulmate_ , and I’ll be damned if I ever let anything happen to you again.”

Clayton nods. “I believe you.” He looks to Matthew, who cocks an eyebrow at him. “Untie him, will you? He can go, he ain’t gonna hurt me.” He gets to his feet, and walks to the door.

“Clayton, _please_ -" Aly can’t keep himself from pleading.

Clayton turns, and finally makes eye contact, breaking whatever Aly was going to plead into splinters. “Not yet. And I ain’t _yours_.”

And then he was gone.

* * *

It takes time. More time than he had thought it would, if he’s being honest with himself. Some small part of him had taken hold of the stories and tales where soulmates are forgiven of all wrongs, where they overcome impossible odds to be together, and had hoped (had hoped so desperately) that it would be easy. That Clayton would welcome him back with open arms, that they would be together and – he doesn’t really know beyond that, had no grand plan other than rushing back and finding him, other than making things _right_.

(He is learning that there is no easy way to make it right with someone after you’ve shot them through the heart.)

In the weeks that follow he is slowly allowed back into their circle of trust, with bumps and bruises along the way. Miriam punches him when she first sees him. (She also threatens to castrate him if he hurts Clayton again, and he has no doubt that the threat is real.) Arabella doesn’t speak to him for a week, then floods him with questions – how did it feel (it didn’t, it didn’t feel at all), how did he know Clayton was alive, how did he know it was because of a spell gone bad – he answers each one as truthfully as he can. When she starts pressing for his intentions, he only says that he’ll take whatever Clayton will give him, and wants never to hurt him again.

“The fact that he’s a wanted man doesn’t bother you?” she asks suspiciously.

“It only bothers me because it’s for a crime that isn’t his, and I wish I could clear his name,” he responds. He’s heard the story now, bits and pieces, after he asked Clayton what he had meant about the law being wrong, so many nights ago; he will hear the rest in time, but Clayton’s word that he is innocent (in this, at least) is enough. 

So he waits, and relishes the time they give him, and tries not to feel terribly alone (more alone than he’s been in years; there is nothing like almost having someone, or having someones and then losing them, to make you aware of your own solitude). He watches the bruise licking across Clayton’s face heal, and hopes and hopes and hopes.

(Even though hope is hard to hold on to.)

* * *

“Will you tell me if this is unfixable?” Aly says, hushed in the stillness of the pre-dawn light at the end of a long watch. “If I should just stop trying?”

He can’t look at Clayton, so he doesn’t, just stares out over the quiet landscape as they wait for the sun to rise. Clayton is quiet, and Aly lets the question hang, solemn and heavy. He needs to know, needs to know if he should stop trying because – because if that’s what his soulmate needs, then that’s what he’ll do. (He’s already broken so much, and if leaving is the only way to fix it then so be it.)

Something touches his hand, and he glances down to see Clayton’s hand beside his, skin barely brushing. Clayton twines their little fingers together, small and simple, and Aly nearly cries.

“Don’t give up on me yet,” Clayton whispers. “I need time, but don’t… don’t give up on me. Not yet.”

Aly nods, and tucks away the hope that threatens to spill over and scare Clayton away. “I won’t. Not ever. Not unless you want me to.” He squeezes Clayton’s finger, just lightly, and smiles when Clayton squeezes back. “Thank you.”

Clayton nods, and they watch the sun start to rise.

* * *

He waits, and he hopes, and his patience is rewarded. After that brief moment of contact Clayton starts touching him. Nothing big, just small moments, but ones that sear in his memory nonetheless. The clap of a hand on his shoulder, the nudge of an elbow against his, knees resting together under a table, the brush of fingers against his palm. One night, outside the hotel room Aly still rents, he steps in close, wraps a tentative hand around the back of Aly’s neck and pull him in for a kiss. It’s chaste, just a hint of lips against his own before Clayton steps back, but it still sets his heart to racing. It becomes easier, after that, to reach out and touch Clayton back. To wrap him up in a hug after a particularly nasty fight, to lay a hand on his back, to tangle their fingers together like lovers do.

Then he buys Aly a gift. It’s nothing huge, a patterned kerchief that goes with a shirt he’d recently bought, but it still makes him smile wider than he has in years. Clayton flushes a brilliant red when Aly presses a kiss to his cheek in thanks, but his lips curl into a satisfied smile when he sees Aly wear it the next day.

(Aly will learn, over the weeks and months and years, that Clayton shows his love through actions, through his presence, through touch that seems to come easier than words. And through gifts, the kind that Aly never expected he would receive from anyone; a beautiful leather gun belt, an engraved flask and a bottle of fine whiskey to go with it, a pair of embroidered suspenders when he notices Aly gaze at them a moment too long. Things he can use, but not necessarily things he needs. Things chosen just for him.)

It still takes time, but their bond grows. They spend time together outside of their strange little family and the work they do for Swearengen, just the two of them in the bar or a hotel room or out in the hills. They talk, more than Aly ever thought they would, with Clayton’s quiet nature and his own carried secrets. His most treasured are the nights when he can’t sleep, when Clayton makes coffee and stokes the campfire and they stay up all night together telling stories and mapping scars.

(“Ain’t a _date,_ ” Clayton had stressed when Miriam first teased him about it. She just laughed, and shoed him out the door to go meet his soul.

“Sure it ain’t, honey.”

“Oh, go fuck yourself.”)

They barely even notice when they become inseparable, when Clayton stops sleeping in his own hotel room, when they take every watch they can together, when they start making plans for a future. _Their_ future, together.

(And for the first time in years, Clayton hopes for one where he might settle down, where he might have a _life._ And for the first time in years, Aly dreams that he might have a _family_. The blessing, it seemed, had come at last.)

* * *

“Ain’t even sure I deserve a soulmate,” Clayton whispers one night, while they’re tangled together under the stars, late after the others have fallen asleep.

“Ain’t sure I do either,” Aly whispers back. “Maybe neither of us do, maybe that’s the reason we have each other.”

“How lucky we are,” comes the soft response. “That our ragged edges fit together so well.”

“Lucky indeed,” Aly breathes, then smudges a kiss to Clayton’s temple. “The luckiest that ever lived.”

* * *

“I’m sorry,” Aly murmurs against Clayton’s skin. He presses a kiss to the knotted scar tissue over his heart, smoothes a hand down his ribs and feels the thrum of life beneath them. Clayton arches into his touch, hooks a leg around his waist and pulls him further into the cradle of his hips.

“I know,” Clayton murmurs back, running a hand down his arm to twine their fingers together in the bedsheets. “You’re forgiven.”

(He’s heard this many times, almost as many as he’s apologized; but sometimes he needs to seek absolution, and sometimes Clayton needs to let him.)

* * *

Time passes, as it always does. It takes almost a year for them to actually give up on their hotel rooms and build a home together, a small one, just the right size for two men who are almost never home. Clayton insists on a yard, someplace they can grow a garden or tie a dog if they ever decide to. He’s more interested in domesticity than Aly would have thought, and it makes him want to settle in a way he hasn’t wanted to before. He never thought he would have this, and he knows Clayton didn’t either; that’s part of what makes it so beautiful, so treasured.

(They do get a dog, eventually, and they take her with them everywhere they go.)

* * *

Clayton finds Matthew at home, doesn’t even wait until he’s shut the door before he starts to speak.

“Father, do you ever… would you ever…” he trails off, then shakes his head. “Never mind, sorry for wastin’ your time.”

He’s almost out the door before Matthew catches his arm.

“Now just hold on, Clayton. You got something to ask, just ask.”

Clayton tries to speak, falters again, so Matthew sits him down and grabs a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. Clayton’s three shots in before he finally asks what he came for.

“Would you ever perform a marriage? For two men, I mean?”

Matthew’s face splits into a grin. “You aim to be askin’ our Mister Fogg for his hand?”

Clayton pulls his hat down to hide the blush that spreads across his cheekbones. “If he’ll have me.” He exhales, then fidgets with his glass. “We’re already bonded, and neither of us need God’s blessing, just… thought it might be nice, makin’ it official.”

Matthew reaches out and pats his knee, then pours each of them another shot. It’s been years since they met, years since he’s held any distrust or fear that Aloysius held any capacity for ill intent towards the man sitting in front of him. “That man worships the ground you walk on, I’m sure he’ll be over the moon if you ask.”

Clayton flushes darker, but he smiles, soft and quiet. “Surely hope so.” He hesitates, then asks again. “So you’ll do it? The ceremony?”

Matthew smiles. “Mister Sharpe, it would be my honour.”

(Matthew will not be there to see it, but it takes Clayton two and a half weeks to ask Aly if he’ll marry him. He’s nervous as fuck and can’t stop fidgeting with the gold ring he had commissioned six months ago, a simple band that he hopes will fit. He’s jittery and won’t say what’s _wrong_ , so finally Aly wrestles him down onto the sofa beside him and tells him to just say it if something’s on his mind. From the dumbfounded expression on his face he’s not expecting Clayton to pull a ring from his pocket, to hold it out and force the question out. It’s not romantic, but it’s so very _them_ , messy and imperfect and with more emotion than anyone would believe two scarred men could carry.

“Do you even need to ask?” he says when he’s done kissing Clayton breathless. “Yes, more than anything yes.”)

* * *

“I wish I’d found you at some other time,” Aly whispers one night as they lie twined together, his ear resting over Clayton’s scarred heart. “Later, or earlier, whatever would have worked to make it different.”

Clayton presses him closer from where his hand is settled under the wing of one shoulder blade. “I don't. I’m glad we found each other when we did.”

Aly cranes his neck around so he can look at Clayton’s face. “Why not? It would mean… none of that would’ve happened.”

Clayton crooks a smile and kisses his forehead. “Ain’t got much use in wishing for the past to change, Aly.” He pauses, and Aly waits as he gathers his thoughts. “Gotta honour our history too, y’know? Ain’t perfect, but it’s ours, and that means something.” His eyes go soft and Aly can’t help but prop himself up on his elbows for whatever’s coming next. “I’m okay with carrying your mark on my heart.”

Aly smiles and blinks back tears. “You sappy motherfucker,” he breathes, then leans in to kiss Clayton, soft and slow. “I love you.”

Clayton smiles into the kiss. “I know.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading, hope you enjoyed! Comments and kudos are very appreciated <3


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